I'm not convinced that feminism has helped the women it should have?

[soapona]

I think on these discussion boards and on my Facebook I see women. They don't insist on marriage so they partner remains married to the ex for years and year, they live together and I wonder what will happen should the man die. I also see women with no security living with men with no intentions of marrying and having children. Women moving in with men too soon. In the days gone by women would and could have insisted on commitment. So now the position for women is worse hanging round waiting for a proposal.

I know they don't have to I'm fairly wealthy and a single parent so have choices and always have. I don't have a lot to gain from marriage.

I'm not sure things have got better for women we are expected to do a lot now two incomes are the usual for a mortgage instead of one in the olden days . So it's a given women work, do the most childcare do we honestly think these thing will change when the power imbalance is there from the beginning?

Also the women marrying "beneath themselves", that's not the correct term but a man earning less and not likely to come into a decent inheritance. What is the point in getting married there if you're a women? Perhaps if the woman is wealthy to avoid inheritance tax for her children but other than that I don't know?

So would woman not be happier marrying the same or above and insisting on marriage early on, like it was a given in days gone by?

Surely Women are now in very risky positions due to this living together in a man's property. I see much more domestic abuse these days. I believe the stats are much higher with non married couples. Surely living together unmarried has been caused by equality and feminism and the very people feminists has been trying to help they've hindered.

I want to say though that I think the battered wife stays for lots of reasons, the first one being she most likely can't afford to live alone especially if she has children. But also, there is such a sense of shame attached to the failure of a marriage, but especially for this reason. I also think battery is insidious: it starts slowly, builds up and grinds you down. If it starts in pregnancy, as a lot of battery does, then a woman is at her most vulnerable and probably disorientated. She is also majorly gaslighted by society into believing her husband is her protector.

Anyway I want to really get off the point of how shit marriage is and back to the point of it being a transaction and about how left wing men jumped onto the feminist rejection of marriage-as-ownership , but ended up freeloading off women without there being any transaction in place, so left wing women ended up worse of because of feminism

Can I also just say I don't think any of this was feminism's fault, I think it was just hijacked

I don't see many happy looking 'hookers' when I'm driving along the Hagley/Soho road at night, tbh.

I don't doubt you. However you do get a lot of them writing articles for left wing newspapers

Surely the difference between prostitution and marriage is the nature of the transaction. In prostitution the man pays for and expects some sort of sexual gratification. In modern marriage in the UK neither sex, nor 'wifework' (not entirely sure what that is) etc is explicitly part of the transaction. Couples either use a form of words that are identical to signify their commitment or make their own up. The transaction is not a business one anymore it is one of commitment which can be demonstrated in anyway the couple see fit. I know this is not true in many other countries but it is here. The fact that either party in a marriage can abuse it is not the fault of marriage per se. The transaction in prostitution is always one of use and abuse however because it is explicitly about buying and selling a woman's body.

Can a marriage still be annulled if it's not consummated?

:copy and pasted from govuk

@Mamello I assume this is proof of a transaction of sex!

The marriage was not consummated owing to the incapacity of the Petitioner/Respondent to consummate it (this will not apply to marriages of same sex couples)

The marriage was not consummated owing to the wilful refusal of the Respondent to consummate it (this will not apply to marriages of same sex couples)

Funnily enough only male/female relationships count!

Marriage is tricky because it's a transaction which involves love, although the introduction of love into the western marriage contract has been traced historically by feminists.

Anyway hippies who were into free love in the sixties rejected the contract, and it was called the sexual revolution, which ultimately only really benefited left wing men. Feminists were on board with it though because they despised their mothers' conservative marriage, which looked to them to be some sort of hell

I can see why women were into free love, because the Madonna/whore dichotomy was too misogynistic to bear. So they offered left wing men free love and "free" childbearing.

This is where I think feminism failed. So today's radical feminists are obviously marriage critical still, but are also PIV critical

Soapona I don't know what you're referring to (as there's no link)but my point is that marriage is now about a contract between equals so there is no power imbalance in law (even if sometimes in practice) now and in the UK.

Sakura I don't think anyone is arguing marriage used to be highly skewed in favour of the man but that is no longer the case now. I think it would be more helpful now to concentrate on why men as a class feel the need still to abuse women rather than call women prostitutes and chattels just because they choose a particular form of partnership.

I don't doubt you. However you do get a lot of them writing articles for left wing newspapers.

Really? I'm not disagreeing, it's just not something I'm aware of (I don't read many of said publications).

Handsworth is getting really bad lately. There's a community association (started by some Muslim guys I believe) called Bearded Bros, who I first became aware of during the bin men strikes when they took it upon themselves to start solving the problem themselves. They're now focusing on then prostitution issue. I read a recent interview where they said that it's become so commonplace in Handsworth that it's now visible in the daytime (24/7) and prostitutes are selling their bodies for as little as £5.

Mamello
I keep putting examples of husbands killing wives, wives stuck in marriages because of the kids etc, to demonstrate how totally shit marriage still is for women.

And that's not even the point of the thread, the point of the thread is: has the fact that feminists rejected marriage worked out badly for women? Which is really a measure of how utterly economically oppressed women are.

In Japan a man can divorce his wife on the grounds she's not putting out (but a wife cannot divorce a man for this reason) and a wife can divorce a man for not providing financially (but a man cannot divorce a woman for this reason) . That's prostitution in its purest form.
I think a lot of Japanese women are antinatalist feminists. They're refusing to have children and have the lowest birth rate in the world. The amount of porn in Japan is obscene, however, and abortion is used as a sort of contraception. At the same time, the women who go the wife route basically become totally financially dependent on the husband.

and prostitutes are selling their bodies for as little as £5.

As shit as being a wife is, it is surely better than this. However I can't say for sure as I haven't sold my body on the streets for £5. I just know that marriage can be awful and also a lot of women commit suicide because they're trapped in horrendous marriages

I guess the wives commit suicide because they figure that's a better option than selling yourself on the street for £5 and they're probably totally right.

In RWW Dworkin says wives stay because of the fear of "something worse" should they leave him

Sakura What I'm saying is that with regard to marriage in the UK both parties are now equal under the law. Therefore if there are still inequalities in power that must be due to how marriage is interpreted not in the institution itself. Much like women should be paid the same as men under the law but we know that is not the case either. The solution isn't necessarily changing the law but changing how it is put into practice. That seems to me to be where the fight really is.

Manello, apart from marriage having an incredibly dodgy past ( it was legal to rape your wife until 1992 in the UK), there's also the issue of the fact that if women were economically independent they would have no need for it.
That is why left wing socialist feminists were invested in state provisions for mothers. They are still woefully inadequate but the provisions we do have mean that marriage is at least no longer universal for women ( apart from the women who were traditionally kept aside as whores).
It is now feasible, in theory, for single mothers to raise kids. In practice, however, it is still incredibly difficult and right wing austerity measures, which we know have hit women hardest, will make marriage seem even more attractive. And this is essentially the Tory opinion on women. Get married or your kids will suffer. Be owned by one man, or we'll target your kids.

Women who still don't get married on feminist grounds of not wanting to be owned are getting shafted. An own goal for feminism, as the OP pointed out

And now because of the infinitely ridiculous trans, which seems to be coming from the left, women can no longer really vote left, when the left have been the only political side that have ever really helped single mothers.

It is now feasible, in theory, for single mothers to raise kids

Good grief have you no sense of history at all?

There have always been single mothers raising kids. And single fathers. Until around five minutes ago in the grand scheme of things life was brutal and often short. Women died in childbirth, men died in wars, everyone died of diseases and accidents we now routinely recover from.

Single mothers are not new. Unmarried women are not new. They have always been around in droves.

What is, for most, new, and where conservatives are both right and utterly wrong is the breakdown of the 'traditional' family. By which I don't mean (and where conservatives are wrong in my view) the nuclear family, but the extended family who lived close together and supported one another when life, all to frequently, went pear shaped. If we have lost anything in the modern world it is that.

@ArnoldWhatshisknickers

What is, for most, new, and where conservatives are both right and utterly wrong is the breakdown of the 'traditional' family. By which I don't mean (and where conservatives are wrong in my view) the nuclear family, but the extended family who lived close together and supported one another when life, all to frequently, went pear shaped. If we have lost anything in the modern world it is that.

Do true!

I watch 2 adverts today for the same thing eHarmony dating. 1st one a man tells you he is online using eharmony because he wants someone long term and serious or words to that affect. Second one attractive blonde woman I'm on eharmory because a house isn't a home without someone to share it with. Interesting I thought, the blonde was obviously to appeal to the blokes looking to co habit. You would never get the guy saying that in the advert as it would sound like he's really looking for a cleaner to gave sex with. So the guy in the advert is about being serious and committed and the woman in advert is housewifey and not serious or committed, just wanting someone special to share her house with. There you have it feminism 2019!

Single mothers are not new. Unmarried women are not new. They have always been around in droves.

I was under the impression that single mothers were accused of having bastard children and that the word bastard was so awful that it was a huge disincentive to become a single mother. I've also heard a lot of stories of forced adoption.

So maybe what I mean is, that feminism made it more acceptable for women to be single mothers, by trying to break down the Madonna/whore dichotomy and also , as I understand it, lobbying for state provisions.

And I also don't think those mothers were single for feminist reasons? Or I might be wrong, I don't know.

What I'm trying to argue is that criticism of and rejection of marriage was a feminist prerogative.

Thing is I can kind of see the right wing viewpoint when looking at things from the children’s point of view. Children from single parent families grow up to be over represented in crime, mental health, drug use and suicide statistics.

So I can see why a government push to incentivise marriage may be warranted. I am not wishing to specifically demonise single parents I both am one and grew up in a single parent household. However I can’t blame society for having a lean on what is best practice re: children.

Now of course that doesn’t mean we should be tolerating marriages where abuse is occurring nor that women should be doing more than their share of housework or indeed taking career hits. I’m all for renegotiating the social contract regarding love and relationships.

So a man SAYING he wants commitment and a long term relationship (not marriage) has more weight than a woman willing to share her home with someone?

This shows you own bias, especially by the added "housewifey" snarky comments.

@Dervel You are talking about poverty. When single parents are educated and middle class the outcome is exactly the same as it is for two parents families. Many studies have been done on this.

@YourSarcasmIsDripping You're missing the point a man is telling you what you the ladies want to hear and the woman is telling the man what he want to hear. They are both different messages.

Really? Call me cynical but I don't believe most of the men on online dating sites want to hear "let's move in".

But what do I know? I haven't actually used them.

@soapona I’m really not. To focus on an issue that disproportionately affects women as this is a feminist forum: Eating disorders correlate with single parent families AND are broadly represented across the socio-economic spectrum.

One could also advance the argument that having children one cannot afford can be causative factor in poverty. Although you are of course free to reject the premise under the grounds having as many children as we’d like is a human right.

I’m not saying I’m entirely happy with the government lean, all I’m saying is looking at it from an evidence based standpoint (re: childhood outcomes) I can understand what leads many to see promotion of family values and incentivising couples to stay together as a positive.

Where we can perhaps meet in the middle is if a whole lot more was done to educate children on relationships, sex, the responsibilities of parenthood, consent, domestic violence and general emotional development and self esteem. I’m not for a minute advocating that childcare should be exclusively women’s work. In fact there are studies that show the positives of a strong paternal bond on areas like mental health and the development of empathy and strong social skills.

I think we should have more honest conversations about all these elements and how they interconnect, and yes I believe a feminist perspective is crucial to that conversation.

@YourSarcasmIsDripping Sounded like it was her house. Guys love that! Men in my experience talk about moving in very quickly if you have a nice house. I'm my experience they seem to like to position themselves to make it their choice too, like they're the man and it's their decision. Practically everyone that I've dated has done that, frankly it's put me right off them. It's not like I date poor men either actuaries and property developers. I read on the relationship here boards about cock lodgers and I wonder what on earth these woman are thinking. In my experience men start talking like that before you've even had decided if you want to have sex. So I'm my case it would be me being the provider and house wife, funnily enough it hasn't appealed to me. Although they tell me they would contribute obviously I'm assuming this would be amount they decided, after all they're men they take the lead in a relationship.

Men are not stupid they look after themselves and their assets. I see now men who I have dated are with people for several years in the man's house, she's has had kids with them (sometimes they won't even have kids) and no wedding in sight. Men know fine well it's a transaction just as woman do. The sad thing is before liberal feminism woman held back and got commitment before wasting their time and did not jump into relationships without a clear view where things are going. As in the advert woman still DO want men to be serious and looking for something long term. Men are judging by the advert looking to play house two totally different messages!